Top 100 Quotes About Voltaire: Famous Quotes & Sayings About Voltaire

#1. There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire - poison and antidote.

#2. Those who are absent, by its means become present: correspondence is the consolation of life. - VOLTAIRE, Philosophical Dictionary

Colin Dexter

#3. I am bored in France because everyone resembles Voltaire.

Charles Baudelaire

#4. (about Voltaire)...he was generally unbedeviled by any foolish consistency.

Thomas Mallon

#5. He's over your head! He was, but naturally I'd flung myself into the Sea of Voltaire anyway and emerged with nothing more than several aphorisms.

Sue Monk Kidd

#6. Despite hating mobs and technically being a nobleman, Napoleon welcomed the Revolution. At least in its early stages it accorded well with the Enlightenment ideals he had ingested from his reading of Rousseau and Voltaire.

Andrew Roberts

#7. Like Rousseau, whom he resembles even more than he resembles Voltaire , Shaw never gave a social form to his assertiveness, never desired to arrive and to assimilate himself, or wield authority as of right.

Jacques Barzun

#8. The comfort of the rich depends on an abundance of the poor. - Voltaire

Cintra Wilson

#9. Voltaire was also there, fleeing a royal arrest warrant, and working as a kind of one-man eighteenth-century USO show during the siege, offering bons mots and brandy between bouts of battle and composing odes to the military men. The

Tom Reiss

#10. One man's Voltaire is another man's Screech.

Dennis Miller

#11. I sympathize afresh with the mighty Voltaire, who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies.

Christopher Hitchens

#12. That is why all romantics are anti-Voltairean, even Michelet, whose political fervor ought to have made him stand aligned with Voltaire; and that is why, on the other hand, all the minds which accept the world and recognize its irony and indifference are Voltairean.

Voltaire

#13. Voltaire's Si Dieu n'existait pas , il faudrait l'inventer ("If God did not exist, he would have to be invented").

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#14. If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent Him. But all nature cries aloud that He does exist.
(Voltaire)

Elizabeth Kales

#15. Enlightenment writer and philosopher Voltaire likened life to a game of cards. Players must accept the cards dealt to them. However, once they have those cards in hand, they alone choose how they will play them. They decide what risks and actions to take.

John C. Maxwell

#16. Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with.

Christopher Hitchens

#17. I only read books if Voltaire's cock has been dipped in red ink and rolled over the cover.

Greg Proops

#18. God's only excuse is that He doesn't exist, remarked Voltaire after a natural disaster that killed many people. Nietzsche loved this quote and wished he'd coined it!

Voltaire

#19. Voltaire expected that within fifty years of his lifetime there would not be one Bible in the world. His house is now a distribution centre for Bibles in many languages.

Corrie Ten Boom

#20. Voltaire, as full of life as summer is full of blossoms, giving his ideas upon all subjects at the expense of prince and king, was exiled to England.

Robert Green Ingersoll

#21. Man first creates the universe in his image, and then turns round to say that God created man in his image ... As Voltaire quipped, if God created man in his image, man has returned the compliment.

Neel Burton

#22. I found this quote more relevant today than it was yesterday: 'Man is born to live in the convulsions of anxiety or the lethargy of boredom. Hard work is the final solution - it prevents all of the above.' - Voltaire

Shane Joseph

#23. Joy is my character,
tis the fault of Voltaire.
Misery is my trousseau,
tis the fault of Rousseau.
Gavroche

Victor Hugo

#24. One does not arrest Voltaire.

Charles De Gaulle

#25. I have told myself a hundred times that I should be happy if I were as brainless as my neighbor, and yet I do not desire such happiness.1 - Voltaire

Frederic Lenoir

#26. The faithful witness, like ... Socrates, Voltaire, and Swift and Christ himself, is at his best when he is questioning and clarifying and avoiding the specialists obsession with solution. He betrays society when he is silent ... He is true to himself and to people when his clarity causes disquiet.

John Ralston Saul

#27. Every word that is spoken and sung here (the Cabaret Voltaire) represents at least this one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect.

Hugo Ball

#28. It is impossible to imitate Voltaire without being Voltaire.

Frederick The Great

#29. History never repeats itself," said Voltaire; "man always does." Thucydides,

Barbara W. Tuchman

#30. I know where there is more wisdom than is found in Napoleon, Voltaire, or all the ministers present and to come - in public opinion.

Charles Maurice De Talleyrand

#31. For even the ordinary well-read person, the French Enlightenment is largely restricted to the three big-name philosophes: Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire.

Michael Dirda

#32. Voltaire noted in 1763: The interest I have in believing in something is not a proof that the something exists.

Jerry A. Coyne

#33. The new religion without any secrets is philosophy. The old religion, said Aristotle, is necessary only for the uneducated; Confucius, Buddha, Voltaire and Lessing were of the same opinion.

Artur Phleps

#34. Pascal and Voltaire both probably had IQs in the neighborhood of 200.

Paul Popenoe

#35. To paraphrase Voltaire: if they can make you believe in their absurdities, they can make you commit their atrocities.

Voltaire

#36. As to his religious notions - why, as Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if administered with a certain quantity of arsenic.

George Eliot

#37. Contemplation of the stupidity which deems happiness possible almost made Voltaire happy.

Voltaire

#38. For all the enlightened nations that profess a loyalty to liberty, democracy, economy and all the rest, there has long been a readiness to look for a chosen one; as Carlyle pointed out, even the French, those great anti-venerators, those relentless beheaders of Great Men, worshipped Voltaire.

Chris Anderson

#39. And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable.

Guy De Maupassant

#40. As to your Newton, I confess I do not understand his void and his gravity; I admit he has demonstrated the movement of the heavenly bodies with more exactitude than his forerunners; but you will admit it is an absurdity to maintain the existence of Nothing.
[Letter to Voltaire, 25 Nov. 1777]

Frederick The Great

#41. I must give you a piece of intelligence that you perhaps already know, namely that the ungodly arch-villain Voltaire has died miserably like a dog, just like a brute. That is his reward!

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

#42. Hast thou found out, Voltaire, that it is bliss to die,
And does thy hideous smile over thy bleached bones fly?

Alfred De Musset

#43. The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while Nature takes its course. - Voltaire

William Owens

#44. At least five times, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist skeptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Christian Faith has to all appearance, gone to the dogs? But, in each of these five cases, it was the dog that died.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#45. Voltaire spoke of the Bible as a short-lived book. He said that within a hundred years it would pass from common use. Not many people read Voltaire today, but his house has been packed with Bibles as a depot of a Bible society.

Bruce Barton

#46. Only a Christian culture could have produced a Voltaire or a Nietzsche. I do not believe that the culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian Faith.

Norman Davies

#47. Voltaire, To believe in God is impossible; but not to believe is absurd.

Terryl L. Givens

#48. Having actually read the Voltaire in question, I can confirm the quote is, as different from ours as the breed of spaniels is from that of greyhounds," Nicholas said coldly. "Interesting, though, that in the end we're all just dogs.

Alexandra Bracken

#49. On his tombstone only three words were necessary: HERE LIES VOLTAIRE

Will Durant

#50. We think we live in a global village. We don't. The world is a big and beautiful and incredibly varied place. It can only be known locally, with your two feet on the ground. We should stick to our own gardens, as Voltaire said.

Yann Martel

#51. If God is always on the side of the big battalions as Voltaire says, then, let us not waste our time with little detachments!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#52. I expressed just now my mistrust of what is called Spiritualism - ... I owe it a trifle for a message said to come from Voltaire's Ghost. It was asked, Are you not now convinced of another world? and rapped out, There is no other world - Death is only an incident in Life.

William De Morgan

#53. I found out and lost the only place I ever sort of regarded as home. Oh well. Best to stay in one's garden but Voltaire was a boring writer and sex is one of the greatest things there is.

Kathy Acker

#54. After Voltaire: envy is chained to the portico of the temple of glory and can neither enter nor leave.

Mason Cooley

#55. Voltaire lighted a torch and gave to others the sacred flame. The light still shines and will as long as man loves liberty and seeks for truth.

Robert Green Ingersoll

#56. During this earlier period of his activity Voltaire seems to have been trying - half unconsciously, perhaps - to discover and to express the fundamental quality of his genius.

Lytton Strachey

#57. What! A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my family. I tell you to get rid of that beast, and you ask me, What shall we put in its place!" Voltaire's

Mitchell Stephens

#58. O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There is something ticklish in "the truth," and in the SEARCH for the truth; and if man goes about it too humanely - "il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien" - I wager he finds nothing!

Friedrich Nietzsche

#59. When a priest says 'Worship God, be just, indulgent, compassionate', he is a very good doctor. When he says, 'Believe me or you will be killed', he is a murderer." - Voltaire

G.K. Noyer

#60. The time has come for writers, especially those who are artists, to admit that in this world one cannot make anything out, just as Socrates once admitted it, just as Voltaire admitted it.

Anton Chekhov

#61. Voltaire was deeply impressed by it and cited it often.

Wendy Doniger

#62. I have never played the lottery in my life and never will. Voltaire described lotteries as a tax on stupidity. More specifically, I think, on innumeracy.

Daniel Tammet

#63. That strange premature genius Chatterton has couched in one line the quintessence of what Voltaire has said in many pages: Reason, a thorn in Revelation's side.

Horace Walpole

#64. My passion for gardening may strike some as selfish, or merely an act of resignation in the face of overwhelming problems that beset the world. It is neither. I have found that each garden is just what Voltaire proposed in Candide: a microcosm of a just and beautiful society.

Andrew Weil

#65. It was Voltaire who said that 'in a government, you need both shepherds and butchers.' The problem in France was that the butchers kept killing the shepherds, while the sheep turned cannibal.

Stephen Clarke

#66. If the bookseller happens to desire a privilege for his merchandise, whether he is selling Rabelais or the Fathers of the Church, the magistrate grants the privilege without answering for the contents of the book. - Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

Voltaire

#67. Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies.
(Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.)

Voltaire

#68. Despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else; and therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear which generates true courage.

Edmund Burke

#69. Twenty years after the death of Luther there were more Catholics than when he was born. And twenty years after the death of Voltaire there were millions less than when he was born.

Robert Green Ingersoll

#70. There is something frightful in being required to enjoy and appreciate all masterpieces; to read with equal relish Milton, and Dante, and Calderon, and Goethe, and Homer, and Scott, and Voltaire, and Wordsworth, and Cervantes, and Molière, and Swift.

Agnes Repplier

#71. From May 1717 to April 1718, Voltaire sat comfortably in the infamous prison insulting the Regent and reading Homer.

Jessica Powell

#72. I tend to look at the world more from Voltaire's perspective. Incidentally, if you haven't read Candide lately, it's a fabulous book. It's riotously, laugh-out-loud funny in a way that no Shakespeare comedy will ever be.

George Meyer

#73. Voltaire had once said that it was a good idea for a writer to live near an international frontier so that, if he angered powerful men, he could skip across the border and be safe. Voltaire

Salman Rushdie

#74. Voltaire made up his mind to destroy the superstition of his time. He fought with every weapon that genius could devise or use. He was the greatest of all caricaturists, and he used this wonderful gift without mercy.

Robert Green Ingersoll

#75. I love that Voltaire was so willing to shock his readers with arbitrary cruelty. And I can completely relate to it.

George Meyer

#76. Voltaire once wrote, "Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." Sir Francis Bacon added, "A prudent question is one-half of wisdom." Indira Gandhi concluded that "the power to question is the basis of all human progress." Great questions are clearly the quickest path to great answers.

Gary Keller

#77. Voltaire wrote, The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Anonymous

#78. Voltaire abolished Christianity by believing in God.

Lytton Strachey

#79. Voltaire! A name that excites the admiration of men, the malignity of priests. Pronounce that name in the presence of a clergyman, and you will find that you have made a declaration of war.

Robert Green Ingersoll

#80. Voltaire was a smart cookie.

John Perry

#81. Voltaire said you know who is in control by what you can't say.

Kris Saknussemm

#82. It was either Voltaire or Charlie Sheen who said, 'We are born alone. We live alone. We die alone. And anything in between that can give us the illusion that we're not, we cling to.'

Gabriel Byrne

#83. Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing. - Voltaire

Siddhartha Mukherjee

#84. I mean, this man was not /Voltaire/ we killed.

Donna Tartt

#85. Since the time of Voltaire and two-chamber Government, which is at bottom simply distrust and personal self-examination, and gives the popular mind that bad habit of being suspicious, the Church of France seems to have realised that books are its real enemies.

Stendhal

#86. Voltaire argued that if God did not exist Man would be obliged to invent him, and was reviled for the remark.

Carl Sagan

#87. You may be able to read Bernard Shaw's plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

Jiddu Krishnamurti

#88. After all, is our idea of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility?

{Said in a letter to Voltaire}

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

#89. Unfortunately we did not attend Voltaire's dictum to define our terms before we began. The result was disagreement on all issues.

James Aldridge

#90. Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. So said Voltaire, the realist.

Haruki Murakami

#91. How many things here do I not want (Voltaire when in London.

Voltaire

#92. And I think it was a great Frenchman, Voltaire, who said that the beginning of wisdom is the moment when one understands how little concerned with one's own life are other men, they who are so desperately preoccupied with their own. I knew nothing about you and that boy, nothing at all.

William Styron

#93. After my recent brush with voicelessness, I thought I'd share with you a few thoughts about speech. Don't take it lightly my friends. If music is the pathway to the heart as Voltaire suggested, then speech is the pathway to other people. Live in silence and you live alone.

Henry Bromell